The Darkest of Places
by Sapphire at Dawn
Summary: 1980. A time of fear, loss and hatred. On a dark, wet night, a prophecy is made. A prophecy that could determine the future of this terrible war...


_**People who alerted this story before are probably wondering what the hell's gone on. This is a re-written version of Peace No More, as I wasn't happy with the first few chapters of that, and also there were some timeline issues I discovered. It's going to be the same idea as Peace No More, the idea for this chapter just hit me one day. If you're wondering why I didn't just delete the entire fic and post anew, well, I find the little revenge-review I got for this rather hilarious and I didn't really want to delete it! I hope you all enjoy, and please review!**_

* * *

Albus Dumbledore was pacing his study. It was something the portraits of previous headmasters and mistresses could have testified that he did often these days. His brow was furrowed in thought, and every so often, he would mutter to himself, though the portraits could not hear what he said. _What was he thinking of this time_, they wondered. It must be something grave; he was not pausing every so often to run a hand down the back of the elegant phoenix that stood on its perch as he often did. Instead, the bird was surveying his owner, as the portraits were, with doleful eyes, watching his progress up and down the room.

The portraits had been snoozing lightly in their frames when the headmaster had burst into the office an hour ago, and had awoken immediately. They knew he had been to go and see a woman vying for the vacant position of Divination professor (Professor Humpred, the previous professor, had walked out of the post a few days before the beginning of the Christmas holidays. He had read in his crystal ball that if he stayed any longer, he would contract a bad case of Spattergroit which would ultimately kill him), but none of the portraits wanted to break Dumbledore's current reverie to ask him if this was the cause of the pacing, or whether something else, something more sinister, had happened.

Eventually, Dumbledore stopped pacing and sighed. He reached out a slender hand and stroked the phoenix's back, watched avidly by dozens of pairs of eyes.

'A development, Fawkes,' was all he said to the phoenix as he gazed out of the window. It was pitch black outside, and the rain was drumming into the glass with a vicious ferocity.

The portraits took this as clearance to begin questioning him.

'Concerning the Divination woman, Albus?' asked a sallow-faced wizard with black hair.

'After a fashion, Everard,' Dumbledore said in a strange, far-away voice, turning to face the portrait who had spoken.

'What do you mean, Dumbledore?' a rather large witch with flame-like hair asked with a frown. 'Did you hire her? Did she show any promise? She's the great-granddaughter, or something, of Cassandra Trelawney, is she not?'

'I have hired the woman, yes,' Dumbledore said in the same tone. 'Although I was reluctant to let the subject of Divination continue, and to be truthful, she does not have the talents of her great-grandmother. However, I could not have done anything else. She will find herself in grave danger if she strays beyond the castle walls now.'

'In danger?' the sallow wizard said, startled by this declaration. Everyone outside the castle walls was in some sort of danger these days. Everard the portrait was almost glad he had died several centuries before all this happened. 'Why?'

Dumbledore walked away from Fawkes' perch and over to his desk, where he stood, gripping the wood of his chair. 'She will be hunted and tortured for information by the followers of Lord Voldemort, perhaps Voldemort himself, for information they believe she may have,' he said in a conversational tone. He could have been merely commenting on the foul weather beyond the windows. The portraits let out a collective gasp and there were exclamations of disbelief and calls for more information.

Dumbledore held up a hand and the portraits fell silent, all beady eyes trained to the headmaster.

'During the interview the woman fell into a trance and gave a prophecy. She has no memory of it, but the prophecy concerned Lord Voldemort and the one who is to defeat him.'

Once again, there was a collective gasp from the portraits and an outbreak of talk. Once more, Dumbledore held up his hand to silence them. He pulled the chair out and sat down at his desk and began rummaging around. Finally, he pulled out a blank piece of parchment from a pile.

'It will be a boy, a boy born at the end of July to parents who have thrice defied Voldemort. However,' he continued as he reached for his quill and began writing upon the parchment. The portraits were all tense with anticipation, but before they could harry Dumbledore for more information, he continued, 'a servant of the Dark Lord was spying on the interview.'

'He heard the prophecy?' Everard exclaimed.

'Not all of it,' Dumbledore said with a grim smile. 'He head but the first part. Aberforth caught him eavesdropping and ejected him from the pub before he was able to hear the rest. Naturally, he will have hastened to tell his master all he knows. Fawkes,' he added, rolling up the parchment he had just been writing on and sealing it with a tap of his wand, 'this needs to be delivered to the Ministry.'

The phoenix let out a low, musical note as Dumbledore made his way to the perch, and took the furled parchment in his beak. There was a burst of bright flame, and the bird was gone.

'But Dumbledore –' a witch with tight grey ringlets said in an agitated voice after Fawkes had disappeared.

'It cannot be helped, Dilys' Dumbledore replied tersely, making his way back to his desk. 'There was no way I could have prevented him from doing so. The comfort is that only I know the full contents of that prophecy, and it may well be Voldemort's downfall that he does _not_. The only course of action is to sit back and wait to see how he acts. In the meantime, I have to deduce who the parents of this unfortunate child will be. They will need to be placed under protection.'

'Do you expect the Dark Lord to go after them straight away?' Everard asked.

'No,' Dumbledore said decisively. 'He for one will not know to whom the prophecy refers. I believe that he will wait to see what babies are born and then act. He will want to destroy the child, of that I have no doubt. It is better if the parents are in hiding before-hand.'

'Have you any idea as to who they may be?' Everard asked.

'I have suspicions,' Dumbledore replied, turning from the portraits and began pacing again. 'However, it is only December; the child, if he is to be born at the end of July, will only have been conceived in November. It is likely that the woman does not even know she is pregnant yet, or if she does, she has not announced it, so my suspicions could be entirely wrong. I shall have to wait and listen for news.'

'There is also the Quill, Albus,' the flame-haired witch said.

'Yes,' Dumbledore agreed. 'I shall have to keep an eye on that towards the end of July, if I don't already know who the child is. I do suspect the parents will be Order members, so it might not come to that. I should like to have fair warning to hide and protect the parents before the child arrives.'

'Will the Order be informed of this prophecy?' asked Everard.

'I have been pondering whether I should tell them,' Dumbledore said. 'Spreading the information leaves more people who could leak the information Lord Voldemort. I think it would be best if only I remained privy to the sensitive information, especially if it is the child of one of our number. I would rather not put all my eggs in the one basket, as the Muggles say. Do you agree?'

'Of course,' Everard said, and there were nods and murmurs of agreement around the walls, and then there was silence as each portrait digested this new development. Though they were all dead, they still felt honour-bound to the school they had once led, and to the world they had belonged to. But they were also a shrewd bunch, and none of them doubted for a moment that Dumbledore had told them everything that he knew.

At last, the silence was broken by Dilys, the ringlet-haired witch. 'Finally, something you could call a hope,' she said.

'Yes,' Dumbledore said with a sigh. 'Hope, in a way. But he hasn't even been born yet. We may have to wait many years for Voldemort's final hour. And this poor boy is destined to be a murderer, and will have to endure much worse.'

There was yet more silence as each portrait considered this with sadness. The tiny speck of life nestled somewhere in a mother's womb that would have this ultimate fate, this terrible destiny marked out for it before it had even begun to really exist.

'But it is necessary, Dumbledore,' a gimlet-eyed witch said. 'The destruction of the Dark Lord will save hundred, perhaps thousands of lives. It is unfortunate that someone must be marked out for the task from birth, but it is for the greater good that this has to happen.'

Dumbledore had stopped pacing as he listened to the witch's words. 'For the greater good,' he echoed in a distant voice. 'Yes, it will have to be. Now,' he said, breaking out of his reverie and turning sharply on the spot, 'I have an appointment with the Minister.'

With that, he took up the travelling cloak he had deposited on a hat stand and swept out of the office. The portraits all glanced around at each other and immediately broke out into a babble of talk.

'Professor McGonagall!' Dumbledore exclaimed in pleasant surprise as the spiralling griffins revealed the Deputy Headmistress.

'Albus,' Professor McGonagall said in an exasperated sigh, but then seemed to notice the travelling cloak slung over his arm. 'Are you off somewhere?'

'I was going to the Ministry, actually,' Dumbledore replied pleasantly. 'I was just about to summon a house-elf to inform you, but now you're here, that seems unnecessary. Did you want to see me about something?'

'A trivial matter,' she said, shaking her head. 'Two second-years out of bed after curfew. I wouldn't normally bother you, but you said I should report this type of incidences now.'

Dumbledore chuckled at her scepticism, but replied with good humour. 'No, I thank you for telling me about the students. I do wonder if the words 'security' and 'safety' actually mean anything to teenage minds these days.'

'It seems not,' she replied. 'Why are you off to the Ministry at this hour?'

Dumbledore looked at her. There was very little that got past this woman, but how much could he relate to her? He had not yet decided exactly how much of the prophecy or it's… concerns… should be disclosed among the Order, especially seeing as two of their number might be the parents of the boy mentioned. He could not tell her everything, he decided. As much as he trusted her.

'I have come by some information relating to Lord Voldemort that the Minister needs to be aware of,' Dumbledore said, ignoring how she jumped at the sound of the Dark Lord's name. He had long since given up chiding people for giving in to Voldemort's particular will regarding his name.

'Are you at liberty to tell me what sort of information, Albus?' she asked, eyeing him shrewdly.

'I am afraid not, Minerva,' he said apologetically.

'I understand,' she said without anger. 'How long will you be away for?'

'Some hours, I expect,' he said. 'I am not entirely sure when I shall return, but I send word with one of the ghosts when I do.'

She nodded and silently turned around to step back onto the revolving staircase. Dumbledore stepped on along side, and they began to descend.

* * *

'Ah, Dumbledore. I never know whether I should be pleased to see you or not.'

This was the welcome that greeted Dumbledore as he opened the polished wooden door to the Minister for Magic's office. It was a handsome room; the wood panelling on the walls seemed to be of a higher quality than the material that lined the corridors outside, and there was a deep wood-smoke smell that didn't entirely hide the smell of polish that lingered underneath. The main feature of the room was a carved mahogany desk, semi-untidy, as if the owner regularly tried to organise the papers, ink-bottles and quills in to some sort of order but never managed to finish the task. Bookshelves lined two of the four walls and here, yet more papers were haphazardly stacked in front of the books. In truth, the place looked more like a study in a stately home than what one would call an office. The only seemingly office-like think in the room were two filing cabinets that stood sentinel either side of the door.

The eyes of previous Ministers watched Dumbledore beadily from their gilded frames on the wall as he took a seat at the desk, opposite the large woman who sat behind it. This was Millicent Bagnold, the current Minister for Magic. She was a large, robust woman with tightly-curled grey hair and a booming voice.

'And why would you say that?' Dumbledore asked with a chuckle as he peered at the woman over the top of his half moon spectacles.

'Lately, an encounter with you means I'm probably about to hear something either very bad, or something that could help us on the way to winning this war. Whisky?' she asked, reaching for a crystal bottle of amber liquid that stood on the desk in front of her.

'Thank you very much,' Dumbledore said with a smile. 'I take it that you received my message?'

'Yes,' Millicent said as she poured a generous measure into two glass tumblers she had conjured out of thin air. 'One day, I'll get used to that phoenix appearing like that. Couldn't you have used an owl?'

'Fawkes was on hand at the time,' Dumbledore replied, taking a sip of the whisky that Millicent had handed him. 'I needed to alert you immediately and sending for an owl would have lost time.'

Millicent leaned back in her chair, her sumptuous black robes pulling tightly across her broad chest.

'What have you come for this time?' she asked, almost wearily as she sipped her drink.

'There's been a development,' Dumbledore said, using the same phrase as he had to the portraits back in his office. Millicent frowned, and Dumbledore continued, 'A development in the form of a prophecy predicting the one who may be able to defeat the Dark Lord.'

'A prophecy?' Millicent scoffed. 'Albus, I thought you had more intelligence to believe in something like _that_!'

Several of the portraits along the wall sniggered and sent each other cynical looks. Dumbledore ignored them.

'Why the scepticism?' he asked in a level voice. 'You know such things exist; I believe the Department of Mysteries deals with these matters.'

'I'm not even going to ask how you know about that, Dumbledore,' Millicent said, raising her eyebrows. 'Prophecies are so imprecise! So untrustworthy! You know as well as I do that it is entirely dependant on the nature of the people concerned and the choices they make that determine the outcome of these things. You cannot be certain that this person will ever defeat He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. You don't even know if he exists.'

'He will be born at the end of July,' Dumbledore said. 'It may well be that he doesn't exist yet.'

'Not even born?' she asked, incredulously, faltering for a moment from her doubt, but then she recovered herself to continue in her argument. 'Be that as it may, this boy may never grow up to defeat… him. You cannot assume that it is going to happen.'

'Oh, not, not at all,' Dumbledore said. 'But it was implied that the one who would have the power to do so will be born at the end of July, and more importantly, I believe that Lord Voldemort_ will _go after this boy, when he is born, to destroy him.'

'How do you know that?' Millicent asked, her eyes narrowing. Two pink splotches had appeared on her cheeks, and Dumbledore noticed that the whisky in her tumbler had gone. 'Does it say so in the prophecy?'

'No,' Dumbledore said. 'One of his servants overheard part of it and has, no doubt, hastened to tell his master all he heard. There was no way to prevent it.'

She was silent as she reached over to pour herself another measure of whisky.

'I see,' she said when she had finished.

'You see that Voldemort would naturally want to eliminate any threat to himself,' Dumbledore continued. 'So there is no doubt that one little boy born at the end of July will be in very real danger.'

'Do you know who this boy will be?' she asked.

'I have inclinations as to who his parents may be,' Dumbledore said. 'There were a few other clues as well as the indication as to his birth. His parents will have already defied Voldemort three times.'

'Well, that does narrow it,' Millicent said as she leaned back into her chair again.

'It does indeed. I can think of only two couples that have defied him three times, if the word is taken as relating directly. Everyone who has ever professed they do not like or will not stand for his regime has technically defied him once.'

'Can you tell me who they are?' Millicent asked, suddenly leaning forward in her seat, her beady eyes regarding him with speculation.

'Of course not,' Dumbledore said with a chuckle.

'Don't know why I bothered asking,' Millicent grumbled as she reached to pour herself a third measure. 'Could I stand to lose anyone? Oh, come, Dumbledore,' she said as she took in Dumbledore's slightly disapproving reaction. 'It's a natural question; I have departments to run and we're overstretched as it is. I want to be forewarned, that's all.'

'It's a possibility,' Dumbledore said. 'But we will have to wait and see what Voldemort does.'

'Yes, I suppose that's the key, now,' Millicent said. 'Seeing as he knows of the prophecy's existence, he's bound to act on it. We'll just have to try and protect the family and the boy as best as we possibly can. Will he wait until the boy is born to act, or will he do that… before?'

'I believe he will wait,' Dumbledore told her. 'Firstly, he does not know who the mother is. Secondly, the nature of the prophecy suggests that it will be the boy he goes after, not the mother. However, we will still have to protect the parents. After all, prophecies aren't entirely reliable, as you yourself pointed out.'

Millicent sighed, finally setting down her empty tumbler. She stared vaguely behind Dumbledore's head, unblinking.

'You know, it feels wrong to be sat here waiting for him to act,' she said. 'After all these years on the offensive, even if it was just going to be a blind stab in the dark and wasn't going to yield anything. Years of being proactive and now we have to do nothing with the biggest chance and hope we've had. You shouldn't have told me, Dumbledore,' she said, giving him a sly wink. 'I'll be restless for nine months now.'

Dumbledore chuckled. 'One reason I did not invite you to join my society, Millicent. You couldn't have tolerated the subtlety of it.'

'Ha! That's true,' she said with a booming laugh. 'I don't know why you told me about _that_ either.'

'Because I can trust you to keep the secret,' Dumbledore said. 'The wizarding world expects me to be doing something to fight this Dark Lord, and by coming in to the Ministry every so often to update you on our progress, or discuss certain subjects or offer advice, they see that I am doing just that.'

Millicent didn't seem to hear Dumbledore. She had leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk in front of her and was rubbing her thumbs together, a thoughtful look on her face. Finally, she spoke, 'Would you consider formally joining us, Albus? Move your secret society in to the open and join forces with the Ministry?'

'I cannot do that, Millicent,' Dumbledore said softly. 'You know this.'

Millicent sighed. 'I suppose I knew the answer to that one, too. One day I'll find the reason why, I hope.'

'Perhaps,' Dumbledore said in the same soft voice. 'One day.'

They were silent again for a long while, Dumbledore sipping on the whisky left in his tumbler. Again, it was Millicent who broke the silence.

'You'll need to go down and see the boys in the Department of Mysteries,' she said. 'That prophecy needs to be recorded. Here, take this,' she took a scrap of parchment from her untidy desk and scribbled something on it, signing it with a flourish, 'it'll stop them prying too much.'

'Thank you,' Dumbledore said, taking the parchment. 'Until next time, Millicent.'

He stood up, setting down his empty tumbler on the desk, bowing slightly in her direction and swept out of the office.


End file.
